Julian Barnes

I'm a complete democrat in terms of who buys my books.

All bad things are exaggerated in the middle of the night. When you lie awake, you only think of bad things.

Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic. And for this serious task of imaginative discovery and self-discovery, there is and remains one perfect symbol: the printed book.

They said I couldn't play anything but an English boy. I knew I could. So I went to New York.

I hate the bad rap that people give my parents. Because they are just parents, really, at the end of the day trying to stand up for their daughter and themselves.